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January: The Monday of Months

January is supposed to be the month where you magically sort out your life; create resolutions to keep yourself on track, and renew your optimism for the year ahead. I’ve given little thought to these things this year. Quite frankly, I was just exceptionally proud of myself for wearing a statement lip out of the houses on New Year’s Eve. The bar is low, what can I say?

I usually come up with some sort of placating answer for the inevitable “What’s your new year’s resolution?!” questions we all get. Around this same time last year, I wrote about my “Holiday Hangover,” which I somewhat avoided this year (although I still have an unnatural attachment to my Christmas tree and never want to take it down). I do believe I took more chances this year, like I resolved I would. I’ve decided that his year will be different. While it sounds somewhat nutty, my resolution is to focus on me. What do I want? What can I do for myself today? What kind of person do I want to be?

Like a lot of people I know, I spend a decent amount of time doing things for other people. This can be wonderful, don’t get me wrong, but when does doing things for other people suddenly turn into putting yourself second? December 2015 completely took the air out of my tires, so much so that spending a week inside my apartment with no human interaction suddenly seemed like a really good idea. I felt so depleted, I didn’t even want to do the things I had planned for my vacation. I appeased myself with a little online shopping here and there, but I knew the one thing that would make me feel better in the long run, would be to invest more time and effort into unapologetically doing the things that I want to do. Everyone tells me that your 20’s are your “selfish” years, the years you get to figure out the things you want in life. I would like to do that more this year. I want to quiet my mind enough to get lost in more books. I want to be able to visit my family in Austria, and to go on new adventures (Africa, anyone?). I’m also really looking forward to getting the smile I’ve always wanted, and smiling a lot bigger in photographs. Maybe I’ll make it to the gym and to yoga more often, and manage to organize my home a bit better. I want to continue to make myself into the best possible version of me. I know it won’t happen overnight, but there’s also nothing stopping me.